


the color of green

by meanderingsoul



Series: build and rebuild [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathtub Sex, Cooking, Couch Cuddles, Date Night, Driving, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gentleness, Growing Old Together, Hiking, Kissing, Lazy Mornings, Nostalgia, Roughhousing, Tasty Food, Vacation, realizing you're in love all over again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 05:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14395569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: It got warmer and they spent more time wading in the gritty, pebbly places. She saw tadpoles around her toes. The nails were painted purple now.They were some of the reasons this world was still round and she hadn’t spent this much time outside in it in years.





	the color of green

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you everyone who's chatted with me or validated my dumb headcanons or sent me prompts with pleading emoji faces this last month and thank you memorizingthedigitsofpi for your beautiful manips. This fic wouldn't have happened half as fast without you all.

 

It was just a trial run.

They didn’t like beaches anymore. She hated crowds and Phil wasn’t really that attached to cities. They’d both seen dozens of cities, all over the world. Beautiful, unique, and _noisy_. The only thing that was probably going to drag either of them into a museum these days was dinosaurs.

So after the fifth time the word ‘vacation’ came up and it was less of a joke than the others, they’d rented a cabin near a state park lake. In the off-season for some tiny, woodsy, tourist town was about as anonymous as things got. And _quiet_.

They were taking a month off.

*

They got in Lola and drove, bags in the backseat and cell phones silenced if not turned off. You never knew. Daisy was in charge and nothing big was going on, Mack backing her up. It should be a much calmer trial run for her than the one a few years back.

It was too grey to have the top down at first. She put up with old swing for an hour before she flicked the music off.

Phil gave her a look but she pretended to be staring out the window and not notice his put upon sigh.

Another mile and he rolled the windows down, let the damp air rush through.

They stopped at some café two blocks from the main road that apparently had amazing coffee and decent enough tea. The pastries really were very good. No sad, little, semi-squished croissants.

Phil rubbed his hand over her shoulders while they waited for their order. When she swayed closer to him, he slid his hand under the familiar leather of her jacket, traced her shoulder muscles with his thumb.

They’d never really done this before. It just felt like they had.

They stopped another time for bags of jerky and pemmican from some building Phil somehow knew about that looked like it’d almost burned to the ground years ago. She’d stayed leaned against the car staring out at a field of tiny corn plants, wriggling green in the breeze.

*

The rental place called it a “rustic” cabin, but this was not very rustic at all. Just very pine colored.

They had a bathtub and a tiny shower, some battered pots and pans. A stove and a little oven, but no microwave. Sheets and towels. There was a picnic table out back. Brick pavers to park Lola.

They’d made good time, even stopping for supplies on the way. The remote portions of the drive Phil let Lola do her thing.

She’d spent most of the drive with her shades on, hair down, and eyes half open as miles of green blurred by.

Three weeks. They had three weeks of this.

It was the closest thing to living together they’d ever had. This wasn’t just a trial run for Daisy.

She stopped still when she caught a glimpse of the sun setting orange over the lake.

*

She woke up first because she always woke up first. She usually went to sleep first too, but Phil had dozed off with his face against her shoulder about the same time she did.

“Give me five more minutes and I’ll make you crepes,” he mumbled with his eyes closed.

Melinda shifted over to set her chin on his shoulder, watch his dark lashes and pale stubble while he blinked awake.

Phil had her mince green onions and chop little tomatoes in half. He filled the crepes with fluffy yellow eggs and the bright vegetables, poured honey over the last two like you were supposed to do with tortillas.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked. The rust was out of his voice after his second cup of coffee.

She shrugged.

They finished unpacking, sorted out the kitchen cabinets, and went back to sleep, belly to belly on the bed and sideways on top of the sheets.

She woke up with her head on his thigh and his hand in her hair and the sun had moved across the bed in a fat yellow stripe.

“How long…” but she yawned with a click.

Phil’s thumb smoothed over her cheek. “You never sleep enough.”

*

They hadn’t bothered to take a look down into the town yet. They’d stopped for supplies on their way here. Phil had handed her a list of essentials and picked out groceries by himself at some anonymous and oversized hellscape of a store. They were quick. He knew what she’d eat and she wasn’t the one who’d be cooking.

They were the only cabin occupied this week. She knew an older couple would be here the next and then leave, down at the opposite end of the place from them and they’d probably never see each other. That was ideal.

They took a quick hike. Four miles on a maintained trail was quick.

It was beautiful. New green leaves and bare branches and mud, but it was beautiful. There was nothing but their footsteps and birds. No alerts. No machinery. No subordinates.

Phil seemed easy in his skin. She hadn’t seen that much in a long time.

She felt like she was waiting for something. To get a call, to wake up. When they got back and left their boots by the door she ended up putting white polish on her nails because she hadn’t had time in weeks and it was something to do with her hands.

Phil’s easiness vanished. He wandered between rooms, all two of them, and went in and out of the cabin. She ignored him until he started sorting things inside the cabinets they’d just put there yesterday.

“Stop.”

“What’s that?”

“Stop _puttering_.”

He stared at her a minute, but they both knew he wasn’t actually doing anything useful so she ignored the wide-eyed look until he grimaced in agreement.

He finally took a book out of his bag and went outside.

Phil seemed to settle into this after that, into reading and cooking and catching sun.

Melinda kept waiting to feel something.

*

Phil started dinner while she showered.

They dragged the little table over until they could both see the sunset over the lake, red, orange, and teal.

They didn’t talk, but she tangled her feet with his under the table.

*

They hiked the other short trail in the morning. Phil took pictures. He’d never been the most creative photographer and he knew it and didn’t care. Tree trunks and boulders, all from his eye level.

She waded into a creek to stack the wet rocks into little spirals, some silky smooth under her fingers, some gritty, some slick with moss. The water was icy and the sun wasn’t out so far. A pale grey sky.

She let Phil lift her onto a dry rock from the water when she was done rather than step into the dirt. Her feet were white, toes bloodless. He shook his head and covered the tops with his palms while they dried. She probably shouldn’t have stayed in so long, but she could feel the grin on her face.

They watched some sci-fi movie she’d missed later. He’d caught it in theaters, but she hadn’t been around. She sprawled back on the arm of the couch with Phil’s head on her stomach, his shoulder between her legs, her head heavy on her hand for once because of how few racing thoughts were in it instead of how many.

Phil’s fingers curled around her ankle.

They went to bed at the same time here, on the early side. He didn’t stay up late to wrap up plans for the next days. She didn’t get up early to teach.

They took turns with the sink when they normally wouldn’t have seen each other. She twisted her damp hair up and he was there in the bed waiting, glasses on and his book in his lap and the end of his left arm tucked in under the blankets because she knew it was still sensitive to cold.

Phil smiled when she climbed into bed.

“What?”

“I’m still not used to actually going to sleep near your without waking up to drawings on my face or fuck-me nail polish or surprising stuffed animals in my bed.”

It was fair, she’d done all of those things to him multiple times. In his little academy room, long quin-jet rides, when he slept on the couch in her old house when they’d insisted he shouldn’t drive.

It’d been a long time, hadn’t it. “Don’t give me ideas Phil,” she warned and felt the thrum of his laugh against her forehead.

She listened to crickets while she dozed off, his fingers in the loose layers of her hair and holding one of his thighs against her chest.

*

They didn’t have sex as much as she might have thought.

For a vacation that is. They had more time and privacy right now and people had sex more on vacation, right? They generally had sex once or maybe twice a week unless one of them had been injured, but not because of scheduling really. That was just how often they ended up sidling into each other’s space like that.

But they’d been here for days and hadn’t done anything except kiss and lie close together.

They’d been sleeping together a couple years now. Before that had been awkward and before that they’d both gone two years without. There’d been so much stress and worry involved in all of this the last eight years or so she’d never given it a second thought until now.

There was probably a lot of truth to it just being their age. She didn’t _feel_ old, and Phil didn’t really look much different to her now than he had 20 years ago, but maybe you never really felt it happening. Maybe it was just the ache in her knees in the morning and her wrists at night and the grey in his hair.

There was some joke she’d overheard somewhere a long time ago, men shouting cheerfully outside an airfield, that you replace frequency with actual skill over time.

That was _definitely_ true.

She’d come inside from a run to find him taking a bath. The cabin had a decently big tub and he was sprawled back with his eyes closed, one knee poking out of the water pinked with heat.

She stared for a while then stripped down and climbed in with him.

It didn’t take much, straddling his lap and rolling her belly along his while they kissed, his wet fingers tangling in her hair and her tongue licking into his mouth.

She braced her forearms on his sturdy shoulders to sink onto his cock, dropping her head back at the stretch. They were good at this now. She cradled the back of his head as he sucked along her throat while her body warmed to his inside her. He knew the exact slant to rock his hips to take her to pieces when she was in his lap like this. She knew when to snatch his hand from her breast and suck his fingers into her mouth because she needed him to be as close to it as she was.

She came soundless except for desperate gasping for air, clung around his neck while he thrust up into her hard for a moment until he came because coming down off that edge of orgasm her body could take it easily.

Melinda nosed at his throat and wiped her face with a wet hand to hide the fact she’d come so hard there were tears on her face.

She offered him a hand up from the tub when the water started to cool and he kissed her fingers one by one, grinning. “I can’t stand up yet.”

She smiled back and got out of the tub before the shake in her thighs made her slip and fall.

*

Everyone had kind of agreed without discussion not to call them unless it was urgent. They weren’t off the grid. Daisy knew exactly where they were and everyone else knew what they were doing.

The phones stayed silent except for the occasional buzz of a text.

She got a few pictures from Elena and at least one every other day from Daisy. Skyline snaps and traffic and Elena’s back porch, dark yellow and brown.

A few pictures of a beautiful baby girl in familiar arms.

It was amazing, the difference less than a handful of years could make.

*

So far they hiked a lot and Phil cooked. He’d always been a decent cook, but he was trying new things, peering at his phone because his glasses were by the bed and then there’d be thin steak rolled up around vegetables or cake with sticky bananas that was almost too sweet for her but too good not to eat.

She’d sleepily watched him make the same pancakes he’d always made one morning, oversized circles and the big, yellow Bisquick box by his elbow, but then he’d squished the not-quite-in-season raspberries into a pan with water and a little sugar and poured that over the top, bright pink and a little tart.

“Wow,” she said, shamelessly cutting another large bite.

“It’s good, right?” He looked pleased with himself, content. She liked the crinkles around his eyes these days, the quick way he lapped pink raspberry off his fingers.

She started running in the afternoons.

“Six-mile hike didn’t do the trick?” he teased, but there was the level of fitness _she_ needed vs the one _he_ needed and it was entirely possible for Phil to overdo it on cardio these days.

She kissed him and screwed up the lay of his hair on her way out, ran along the lake edge because it was flatter. And sunnier. Mostly for the sun, her knees weren't _that_ bad.  

She’d get back and Phil was on the couch with book and glasses, narrow feet hanging over the edge and often the fluff of his hair was damp, so he must have done something of his own routine and showered despite the teasing.

Phil liked it when she was a little sweaty, how she smelled to him or something, nose and tongue against the crook of her neck. It didn’t make any sense to her.

*

She finished rubbing lotion into her legs and arms and climbed under the blankets, pressed her face to his ribs and her arm around his waist.

Phil leaned his book back against her arm and snugged the bend of his left elbow against her. “Why do you want to fall asleep in my armpit?”

His stitched-up heart was under her lips. “It’s a good spot.”

She fell asleep to flipping pages.

*

Melinda hadn’t packed anything to read. She’d never been someone who did that. When they laid outside in the patchy sunshine she just laid outside in the patchy sunshine. Enjoyed the quiet. Phil needed a book to shut up his hamster wheel brain.

He’d brought some murder mystery trilogy in cheap paperbacks that he was on book two of and a copy of Ulysses he hadn’t touched whose presence she didn’t understand.

She thought about texting Dad for something she should read, but decided against it eventually, ended up buying a book to identify all the little birds when they finally went into the town for more milk and eggs. And walked through some deserted little shops. It was a different part of the country. She didn’t recognize most of the birdsong.

Phil didn’t tease her, but she saw his lips wriggle biting back the grin when she sat down across from him with it later.

“I feel fucking ancient,” she growled.

He shrugged. “Better than golf, right? Or fishing, but at least that’s usually edible.”

“ _Still._ ” She was sitting outside with a book about songbirds like the kind of little old lady who wore hats with a flower on it and, and knew how to bake stuff.

“Would that be so bad?”

“Being old?”

“Mmhm.”

It wasn’t like they were old yet, but they would be eventually at some point. It was inevitable. “Long as I don’t turn into my mother I guess.”

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

They’d been sleeping with the windows cracked open. Melinda didn’t have the same paranoia about being watched or assassinated that shadowed her mother on her worse days.

Most of the people good enough to assassinate them both successfully were their friends.

*

It didn’t take long before they’d been all over all of the hiking trails in about a half mile radius.

They’d climbed one of the waterfall rock formations just because they could, had waded through creeks and jumped little ravines, damp green places other people who came here didn’t go. Their idea of difficult terrain and park signage were a little different.

It got warmer and they spent more time wading in the gritty, pebbly places. She saw tadpoles around her toes. The nails were painted purple now.

They were some of the reasons this world was still round and she hadn’t spent this much time outside in it in years.

Phil fried porkchops and made what seemed to her like white mac-n-cheese and panna cotta that he was pretty proud of. She’d watched him make the panna cotta part, because honestly she wasn’t sure she remembered what it was. Turned out it was good with strawberries.

She liked food just fine. They’d both gone hungry too many times in the field to not appreciate having plenty of it and the luxury of time to eat it. Phil was just the one who had all kinds of opinions and ideas about it.

When she’d put a box of the Shield-grade protein bars in Lola he’d literally thrown them back out to her with the glower reserved for dumb mistakes.

*

She woke up early, way too early to do anything. Dawn was barely pink.

Phil’s back was to her because he always turned in his sleep, a childhood habit that had never broken, the fingers of his hand curled sweetly in front of his face. She kissed his back before she slipped out of the bed.

Outside was cold and the grass was wet under her bare feet, but it felt right. It felt good, crisp air and an old Academy t-shirt of Phil’s and pajama shorts.

The sunrise was less pink and grey, more yellow and violet.

She preferred tai chi, it was more natural to her, but she knew yoga well enough. In another lifetime she’d taken a morning class in a park.

For the first time in this life she did the whole sun salutation along with the dawn, dew and streaks of mud on her hands and feet and her blood singing in every artery, red and clean and alive.

Inside the cabin, she thought about pouncing, about jumping on the bed to wake him, shrieking in his ear so he’d flail the way she’d done when they were at the Academy.

She climbed back in with him instead, letting her muddy feet hang off the end of the mattress. When she finally kissed him awake her fingers left traces of earth on his cheeks.

She could hear his confused mumble when he finally saw it in the mirror. Laughter came easy.

*

She hadn’t packed anything sexy to wear and now she was wondering why. She didn’t _own_ anything sexy to wear anymore. Why didn’t she have anything pretty for Phil to drag off her with his teeth? Why didn’t she have anything in red or blue satin, or black mesh to rub against his chest or his thighs. No lace because she hated it.

She had to look under her t-shirt to remember her bra was grey cotton. It’d been such a long time since she’d thought of those kinds of things.

There wasn’t anywhere to buy that stuff around here, but she could wait a little longer.

*

One night they killed half a bottle of halfway decent scotch and had the wake they’d never had time to have for all their friends who’d never really been their friends at all.

Garrett singing at her 21st birthday party. Sitwell managing to convince an entire office he was so hapless in just a week that they _believed_ it when he knocked over a water cooler and destroyed the computer bank containing millions of dollars worth of black-market data. That time with the stall full of grapefruits. Other names. Other people. Alive and dead.

There was a desperately sad edge to their laughter, but it felt good, to finally air all the loss they hadn’t had time for when it’d happened. That the building she’d worked in for years was demolished. That they never saw Maria or Barton or Nat. That they didn’t know where Fury even was.

The younger agents had lost a lot of stability, had lost friends and trust and faith when Hydra first revealed themselves, the way they all had.

But, in a lot of ways she and Phil had lost a bit more.

*

She hadn’t been that drunk in a long time. Waking up to sunshine was not appreciated today.

They didn’t have a toaster here, so Phil laid bread in the frypan, flipped it with his fingertips and eyes squinted half open.

They ate toast maybe with a bit of butter and Phil joined her in her tea for once.

*

They stopped layering clothes, went barefoot. Her heavy jacket hung inside the door. She got used to t-shirts and linen again. Skin.

They washed their things in the tub rather than deal with a laundromat and left them lying all over the place to dry, splayed out on a towel in the sun in just their underwear.

There was no one to notice the bullet scars and knife scars, or the old burns. Or the impossible lines of black, once necrotic. Or the blue flickers where his left arm ended, the prosthetic left inside to charge before it got glitchy.

She sprawled on her back with one headphone in and let the sun warm her ribs.

When Phil left socks he’d already worn dropped on the floor she laid them gently over his face once he was asleep.

That only happened twice.

*

She was running too much on top of all the hiking. Her legs ached.

She didn’t have that waiting feeling anymore, but she still had too much empty time too suddenly. Running by the lake was peaceful, the sun on her face or wind in her hair, but her legs had limits.

She’d used to know how to do this.

There was a movie on, but she’d zoned out and had no idea what it was. Phil was kneading into her thighs, digging into the arches of her feet with his thumbs, pulling at her ankles to rotate out the tension.

He pulled her closer to him by the hips, breathed hot over her ear and said with obvious delight, “You’re _moaning_.”

When his fingers crept under her leggings she arched into it, braced her shoulders on his chest and rolled her hips up against the curl of his fingers inside her, hands slapping down against the hard floor when he made her come.

Phil fumbled his slick hand into his pants and she tried to help with shivery arms, curling her fingers around him along with his, sucking kisses across his chest until he moaned high in his throat and she could feel the heartbeat throb of it under her fingers when he came.

They dozed off on the wood floor and it was a big mistake, spines at odd angles and his knee over her hips. Her legs might feel better, but it took twenty minutes to stretch the cramp out of her hip socket and she ended up using her heel to get the knot out of his back.

*

“What did you use to do?” Phil asked.

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. They were laying outside to watch stars, sipping the last of the red wine. Phil’d made pepper steak and yellow potatoes. It was the kind of damp spring where there were too many bugs to lay in the grass, so they were on top of the picnic table.

“Worked on the house,” she said. In another lifetime she’d almost had a schedule. She’d mowed the grass and fixed the fussy sink, fed the plants in the spring and trimmed them in the fall, waved at her neighbors and fucked her husband as often as possible. In storage far away she had a stereo that still took cassette tapes. Once she'd had a motorbike.

There were things she liked to do outside of work. Melinda had just never been big on hobbies.

*

It rained most of the next day and they didn’t bother to go anywhere. Phil left the windows open for the smell of it. She threw some towels down in front of a few of them when drops of water made it inside.

Phil made French Onion soup slow on the stove. She’d chopped the onions into neat pieces.

Some channel was running episode after episode of Deep Space Nine reruns with occasional static around the edges.

She only really moved to let him up to stir, laying on his chest in his sweatshirt and making out during the commercials, pretending to be pissed when she’d refused to move once and he’d finally picked her up and dumped her on the couch.

Something had hollowed the last of the lead from her bones. Phil laughed at something and she cradled his face in her hands.

*

They had sex lying on their sides in the dark under the blankets, cold air creeping in the window.

Her foot planted behind his thighs was enough to keep rhythm. His hips were rolling into hers more than thrusting, liquid, moving just enough to get them there.

It felt almost shamefully lazy, half asleep and artless and so good. She did nothing but cling tight around his shoulders, whimper in his ear and finally cry out softly when his thumb slippery on her clit and fingers on her belly and cock inside her finally pushed her over that threshold. He stifled his moaning against her throat a bit later and she kissed along his stubbly cheek.

They fell asleep without moving, a puddle of limbs.

She woke in the night and crept out of bed, the cold floor the only thing keeping her awake long enough to wash her face and teeth and thighs.

She didn’t have the heart to wake him up to do the same. He didn’t even twitch when she tucked her cold hands between them back under the covers.

*

Melinda started collecting leaves.

New ones. Ones that hadn’t fallen from their trees until spring winds. Foundlings that had survived on the ground over the winter.

She tore up a cardboard grocery box and pressed them under rocks on the picnic table.

*

It was still muddy, so they rented a battered rowboat and went out on the lake. Not to fish, just to float. They both knew how to row, took turns until they were far enough out to be in a good spot to stretch out and float. Phil had brought a kind of beer she could stand and she trailed her fingers over the side into the clear water.

“Last time I was in a boat was in the Baltic Sea.”

Phil snorted a laugh. “Last time I was in a boat it was a power boat, stolen, and Barton ran the damned thing aground.”

The water lapped quiet at the metal hull.

*

Phil slept still and silent like a corpse and she squirmed when she dreamed. These were things they knew already. Falling asleep together was new, but sleeping in the same spaces was not.

She must have been kicking him a little because he woke her once.

“Hey Mel, sweetheart…”

“Hmm? Wha…” It was his warm palm on her back that woke her, so she woke up slow, stayed drowsy.

“You were dreaming, I thought... Sorry, I’m sorry sweetheart. C’mere.”

He rolled over to pull her close, nose to his chest and head under his chin and she might have whined a little in her throat being moved but was back to sleep in seconds.

It hadn’t been a nightmare, just some dream. She didn’t have that sick feeling the next morning.

“Did you call me sweetheart last night?”

Phil froze stirring potatoes and peppers in a pan. “…no?”

*

They should probably spar, but she didn’t feel like it.

Melinda sat between his knees while he read and freed her flattened leaves from their cardboard carefully. She’d only ripped the first one a little.

They'd dried wrinkly and not as green as she would have thought.

*

“Wait wait, hold up.”

“What?

“There’s a huge toad. See him?”

It _was_ a huge toad, had to be several years old, sitting half under a craggy rock.

“Camera?” she asked, because this was usually when Phil tried to take pictures of things.

“Don’t have it today.”

“Think he’ll let us pick him up?”

“Is this what you were like when you were five?”

*

She was scrubbing the last of their dishes while he got out things for dinner. It was only fair she did most of the dishes right now.

“Wish we had speakers. Or my record player,” Phil said.

She could picture it. Picture something. His old record player. A kitchen more bright than the wood-paneled cabin. Their jackets in a closet together. A living kind of green outside the windows.

Maybe, maybe that was an option someday.

He had her mashing vegetables together, cauliflower and turnip and it seemed like something that should probably be disgusting but he’d add some herbs to it or something and somehow it’d be good.

Phil picked her up and set her on the counter with a quick kiss when they were apparently mashed enough. There were only three men in her life who’d ever been allowed to do such a thing.

It was nice making dinner half-dressed. Phil in faded sweatpants and a Captain America t-shirt, her in his stolen boxers and an airplane patterned pajama top from a set her Dad sent her for Christmas years ago.

They had lemony fish and the mashed vegetables and the pound cake left from the other day.

It felt like something that could be normal. Melinda was surprised how happy that made her.

*

They did a lot of fuck-all. A lot of nothing.

She had no recollection that either of them knew _how_ to do nothing, but apparently you learned quickly.

*

“Did you ever worry we’d be less… _us_ without Shield?” she asked in the dark one night.

They’d been Shield their whole adult lives, the whole time they’d known each other. They still were right now, but not in the same way.

“Every day.”

“Still?”

Phil kissed the top of her head. “Not like I used to.”

*

Phil was detailing Lola. Why he was doing that a week before they drove back halfway across the country she didn’t get, but it was warmer today and he was in his reading glasses and cut-off jeans and an ancient UW t-shirt, threadbare around the collar and she just… stared at him a while.

He didn’t notice her, focused intently on the curve of a door handle.

Her chest ached, but it was good.

“Hey beautiful,” she said.

Phil froze and then laughed, standing up to grin at her brightly and looking so much like the boy she’d met in an aquatics class forever ago. “Why would you say that?”

He’d been an annoying little fucker a lot then too. Melinda growled, “Look in the mirror sometime dumbass,” over her shoulder.

She could feel his confused little frown on her back when she walked away around the cabin to find a sunny spot for tai chi.

But she set up where she could still see him.

*

Later, licking the grooves along his hips and letting her hair drag across the softness of his belly Phil tried to drag a pillow to his face to keep quiet.

She snatched it out of his hands. “You better let me hear you.”

There was this wide-eyed, astonished stare he had sometimes. She’d been pissed the first times she’d seen it.

Now she couldn’t get enough of it.

*

The table was covered in flattened leaves, unusable. Phil had given it a woeful look. 

She stacked them by shape onto the tiny side table. Flattened towers of browns and muted greens.

"What are you going to do with those?" he asked, a bowl balanced on his hip.

Do? She'd already done it. "Nothing."

*

It was warmer now.

A bend in the lake edge kept them out of sight behind tree trunks. They stripped down to underwear and waded into the water. It was cold, but they were from cold places. The water was just cold enough to keep other people away.

When Phil turned his back she splashed him.

That was enough to set them off. He splashed her back and swiped at her legs and she lunged into him, hands quickly trapped in hands and grappling for leverage. The water was just deep enough to fall easy if they threw each other over. 

She couldn't remember the last time they'd _played_ like that.

They hadn’t brought towels. Or jackets. Their clothes turned soggy quickly against their wet underwear and toes were cold inside shoes. She let him tuck her under his arm while they shivered walking back, hers around his waist.

“This isn’t half as bad as Honduras, huh?”

“Or Sausalito.”

“May…”

She smirked up at him before her teeth chattered again.

Phil sighed. “You’re just never gonna let that go, are you?”

*

She made herself tea and stuck her feet in the warm bathwater while Phil sprawled.

*

They drove an hour or so east to hit an airshow.

It wasn’t the flashiest one she’d ever been to, but there were quite a few older planes. They got to climb inside a B-25 that was in pretty good shape and she sat in the pilot’s seat a moment, just imagining.

She could fly it right now, but she sure wouldn’t want to have been depending on it in combat like they had then.

Phil recited from memory what seemed like the entire history of the bomber’s usage in the European and Pacific fronts of WWII and then the diminishing usage throughout the Cold War.

She took his hand while he talked, walking slowly between the planes.

Phil stopped talking, blinked, swallowed. “If, if all the cold war stuff I know from the…”

“No, its fine.” The fact that he’d been a history teacher was probably the _least_ disturbing thing that’d ever happened with the Framework. “I’m used to you being a history nerd.”

He nudged her with his shoulder. “Sometimes it comes in handy.”

They stood around to watch two of the formations fly by that these crowds always ate up, but she knew they weren’t actually that fun to _do_.

A beautiful Stearman biplane flew in graceful arcs after and she _itched_ to give it a try, Phil laughing softly when she leaned up on her toes. A yellow shape against blue sky.

She didn’t realize until they were walking back to the car before things got crowded.

That had been a date. That had totally been a date thing. He’d picked it out and planned it and it’d been something she’d like more than he would really. They’d been sleeping together almost two years and he’d just taken her out on a date and they’d _held hands_ and now she was standing in the crumbling parking lot staring at his back until he figured out she’d stopped moving.

“Mel? What’s up?”

“Thank you,” she said and meant it so much.

Phil stepped back to her and brushed her hair off her face. “Spending time with you is a privilege and a gift. One _I’m_ grateful for.”

Sitting in the car she wondered where _that_ had been back when she’d said _I love you_ and it’d taken him days to say it back.

They stopped for Thai before the drive back and showered off together and made out already tucked undercovers in bed until they fell asleep.

*

Phil was texting when she went out and still texting when she came back inside from tai chi.

He made a rueful face at her. “Guess I missed Daisy.”

“Everything good?”

“Yeah. We just hadn’t really talked at all. She’s been sending me random pictures.”

“Same.”

They were still used to seeing Daisy most days. The others had either moved on or traveled a lot, but Daisy stayed close, helped rebuild Shield into the kind of organization she wanted it to be for the world more than the ashes of what it had been.

That they were teaching her to take over for them had just become more obvious over time, not any more necessary. They both knew she was ready.

Phil shook his head. “Nah. This felt right. She sounds good. This has been a better introduction to it all than the last time.”

“No shit Phil.”

He pouted at her for a moment but didn’t disagree.

*

Phil made a thin cheesecake in the solitary cake pan and covered it in berries and bitter cocoa powder.

They ate half of it in one go, straight out of the pan with forks because they only had so many plates right now and it was easier to balance the pan between them on the couch.

Phil always pet her if she was close enough and held still long enough, hands on her shoulders or back or hair or skimming over her ass.

She could never decide if she loved it or hated it unless it was happening right that second and she could remember how it felt, how much she liked his touch even when it seemed like something that should feel obnoxious and clingy.

Maybe she just didn’t give a shit about that kind of thing anymore.

*

She woke him in the morning.

“Five more…”

“No. Get up. We’re going to turn into the people from Wall-e. We’re going to have to roll places. We’re going to be in hover chairs like Palpatine.”

“Over dramatic much? You ate some cheesecake Mel. You’ll live.”

“Stop _baking_ so much. We’re going to run.” She started shoving his legs off the bed.

“May…” he growled.

“We’ll make Lola slow.”

 _That_ got him up.

“You run weird,” she said by the lake. He’d always run weird. Something in his hips and elbows, for all he could keep pace with her endurance just fine for her shorter runs, could outpace her if they sprinted with his longer legs.

“That’s very nice May.”

*

Daisy called her phone one afternoon.

She ducked outside before Phil heard the buzz, just in case it was bad news, so she could react, could plan before she had to get him out of the shower.

“Daisy? Is something…”

“No! No, crap I’m sorry. Everything’s fine. I know we’ve all been trying not to bug you guys…”

“Never said you couldn’t call.”

“I know. I know, it just kind of turned into a silent pact kind of thing.”

She listened to her breathing through the phone for a minute, just waiting for her to speak. There were far worse things to wait to hear.

“I think, I think I just needed to hear your voice.”

 _Oh Daisy_. “You’re sure nothings…”

“Everyone’s fine. Really. I even took the weekend off. Mack’s got everything covered.”

“Hmm.” If Daisy took the weekend off she was probably injured, but it obviously wasn’t serious.

“Don’t ‘hmm’ me May. I won’t talk about work.”

“Not what I was thinking about.”

“Sooo, how’s everything been with you guys?” Daisy asked quickly, with a teasing brightness she’d been resigned to for a long time now.

“I had no idea I knew how to do nothing and like it,” she finally said.

Daisy started laughing, bell-like and loud and it was one of Melinda’s favorite sounds these days.

“I don’t believe you. Ah, oh wow I don’t believe you. You’ve totally been training every day and scowling at unhealthy food.”

She sighed heavily. “Daisy…”

“You can’t even tell me I’m wrong!” and she was back to belly laughing through the phone until she gasped for air.

“I’m hanging up Daisy.”

“Good talk May!” she said and hung up first.

 She held the phone against her breast for a minute. There was something precious about it, when something that sounded so Phil came out of Daisy’s mouth.

*

They drove another town over buy something Phil couldn’t find in the local shop. Some ingredient. She really wasn’t sure what. Something about spaghetti.

He drove Lola with the top down, but it’d been late afternoon when they left and was getting dark already on the way back. Phil was listening to the wind. She had a headphone in. Dark Side of the Moon.

She watched his profile in the occasional streetlight of some tiny intersection on the way to nowhere, the slant of his nose and the light through the clear jelly cornea of his pretty eyes.

It was the kind of image she tried to burn into her brain where no one could ever take it.

*

They walked out into the woods for miles in the morning after Phil fried eggs in a hole. They’d been hiking off-trails with just a compass for days now, taking whichever path was easiest through the brush and then doubling back.

It was much nicer being in unmanicured forest without guards or Hydra or whoever shooting at them. It really was.

“We could camp out here if we wanted to,” Phil said.

She stopped on top of a boulder. “Why would we want to sleep outside in the mud when we don’t have to?”

“I don’t know. We could.”

“Mm.” _She_ wasn’t sleeping outside in the mud when she didn’t have to. She'd done plenty of that.

“We should arc back in another mile.”

“Yup,” she said, plucking a tiny perfect leaf off a low branch. She already had a handful held carefully between her fingers.

That afternoon Phil had her mince onion and carrot while he spiced beef in a bowl, showed her how to roll meatballs with her palms.

And then how to not make them too big or too small or too loose so they fell apart while cooking and not to squeeze too hard so all the flavor dripped out and this was why Melinda didn’t cook damnit.

Dinner was still delicious.

*

They’d probably talked more than she thought they had, but it didn’t feel like it. Phil was one of the few people she’d ever had where she didn’t need to use so many _words_ to be understood.

*

They went for a walk into the town instead of the woods and Phil insisted they stop for ice-cream.

The shop sold it in the kind of sugary waffle cone she hadn’t eaten since who knew when, but the vanilla-bean wasn’t too sweet on her tongue.

Phil got pistachio, apparently because it was green and it was spring. He rambled about it when she gave him a look because he always seemed to get chocolate.

They sat outside, chairs dragged to tuck in close, shoulder to shoulder. Why walk and eat when you didn’t have to. She’d done enough of that, jogging towards an extraction site and nibbling a power bar because there was no time to stop. She liked how his shoulders felt under just a soft shirt, navy stripes rucked up around his elbows, warm under her palm.

Phil nosed at her temple. They kissed twice, soft and chilly, quick and gentle.

Melinda traced his spine with a finger and licked her ice cream.

It was about as relaxed as she’d been outside an enclosure locked by her own hand in years, but you still never stopped watching. Somebody was smiling in their direction and she finally noticed they were smiling at _them_.

She wasn’t sure why it startled her so much at first.

It’d just been so long since her life was the kind of thing people admired or coveted.

*

Phil had apparently woken up first.

She woke up laying on top of him, his fingertips light and ticklish on her face, his hand on her back over the blanket, smoothing up and down the line of her spine.

She hummed and rubbed the cheek he’d made itch against his chest before blinking up at him.

He’d put his damn glasses on to stare at her while she slept. _Oh God Phil_.

Her chest ached again, hot and heavy and vast like the curve of the horizon. “I love you so much,” she said.

He never said it back when she said it because it was an unacknowledged _thing_ now, it’d turned into another of those phrase or gestures they had that no one else understood.

Phil cradled her face in his hand and his smile made the crinkly lines around his eyes stand out and it was such a good look on him. “I’m so happy,” he said and kissed her.

*

They went back tomorrow.

They’d had oversized salads for dinner to eat up the last of the vegetables, diced eggs on top and too many beers.

It actually felt quiet between them, sitting on the little wall next to the front porch and watching moths.

She sat thigh to thigh with him with her head on his shoulder and the fingers of his left hand between her knees. She wasn’t used to staying out of his space now, to their work boundaries.

Melinda had a feeling all of that would come back quick, she just wasn’t sure she wanted it to. “I didn’t think this would…”

“Right? I thought we’d be going nuts. I thought it’d be hard. Not, not being like this with you. Just, being like this at all.”

Last time she’d itched for open sky, for fists. She’d kept her gun under her pillow and knives in her pockets and never quite settled into living in a different way. She’d just wished she had. If it came down to it, she could buy a plane. Hell, she could spray crops if she wanted to. Bring in some extra money. They’d sunk a lot of their own assets into rebuilding Shield twice.

Phil set his cheek against her head. “I’m… tired. Not right now. But. I’m tired. Aren’t you?”

“Someday,” she said.

“I don’t think I want to wait too much longer.”

“We can do this again. Until its time,” another year or maybe less, another few weeks somewhere quiet. Vacations spaced out like what real people did. Until they were done.

“I’d like that.”

*

Their last night of vacation she painted his toes navy blue while he slept.

They got dressed in the dark. Phil had his shoes on before he made the last of the coffee for himself, boiled water for her tea while she checked over the cabin to leave.

She left all the pressed leaves behind on the mantle except for one. She hadn’t really been picking them up to keep. Maybe someone would like them.

When he dropped their bags into the backseat Phil tossed her the keys.

Melinda couldn’t stop smiling for the first forty miles.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a longing for retired philinda softness, so I wrote it all in one weekend instead of sleeping before the final project rush. May's loved Phil forever just like he has her. They've been such a huge part of each other's lives in so many ways. But in this fic she's realizing all over again that she's in love with him now too and enjoying every minute of it. 
> 
> This fic stands alone, but it slots in with a larger series of works with at least one more fic to come. The narratives work apart, but all these fics reference each other's events and carry the same emotional themes - grief and regrowth and renewal. The work title and series names are all inspired by the song To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra.
> 
> Thanks for reading <3


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